Over the years I have developed better habits, however I
still have that large stack of papers under my desk that I have been slowly
(very slowly) going through. Many years ago, I went from a Binder file system
to a folder file system. In my new folder file system I decided that nothing
was going into that folder unless I entered it into my Genealogy Software program
and created a source citation to match. I was really bad at sourcing where I
found information. Later I decided that I needed to scan some of these
documents (vital record copies and such) and I created an electronic file
system too. Many of the items that I find via the internet, I have created an
electronic copy of it and also file in on my computer.

My electronic file system and my folder file system don’t
match. My Folder file system is by couple while my electronic file system is by
record type. For me this works, because I have already accepted that my brain works
different than most people.

I am hoping by joining the Finally Get Organized group that
I will make time each week to address my disorganized mess of papers. I tried
doing this myself several years back, and I was really good for about a couple
of months, however, I get easily side tracked and it fell by the wayside.

My goals are to finally get rid of the pile of papers under
my desk. To make sure that all my electronic file copies are recorded and file
in the same manner. I have found that my naming conventions have changed over
the years and I need to make sure I develop a standard and keep to it. Plus I
need to make sure that my Genealogy Software is also organized and that my
place names are standardized, that my source citations are standardized.
Finally, I would love to have every source citation tied to a media record. In
the beginning, I wasn’t doing that, I could easily find my image in my
electronic file system but I have recently seen the advantages of having it
tied directly inside my genealogy software program.

Dear Myrtle has already assigned some homework. So I can say
my computer desk is clear and ready. We won’t talk about the mess under the
desk. However, my holiday decorations are still up until at least the 1st
of the year. So I won’t be resting too much on the 1st and 2nd,
since these are the days I start taking everything down. With all this said, I
look very much to Finally Get Organized! 2016 Weekly Checklists. Bring it On!

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

I decided I needed to test a small control file and see what
actually happens when I export my Family Tree Maker (FTM) file to RootsMagic 7.
I created a database of 8 individuals, the main person, their spouse, their
parents and grandparents. I then put in birth and marriage dates for the main
person and their spouse and birth, marriage and death information for the
parents and grandparents. I also attached a primary picture to each person. I
proceeded to create notes for all kinds of fields, name, sex, birth, marriage
and death facts. I also create several source citations, some were linked to multiple
facts and others were created for one individual fact. Finally I attached media
to a couple of the individual facts.

I linked a common fact to all the names in my file, and even
though RootsMagic shows that source is linked to the name facts, it doesn’t
show up on the person profile as follows:

I then decided to attach a single source to the name along with the link sources and still no source is appearing, strange. Also, I have lost my citation text that I typed in FTM, see my example below:

Another thing I saw
was that my description notes from FTM were placed in the Person Details note for
the fact and I lost the fact notes as shown below from FTM.

However, my person notes, even though I flagged as private
on FTM were imported into the Person Details note for that person. When I
created the export GEDCOM, I made sure to include private notes.

My media files seemed to transfer over okay. I must note that I did not attach any media to source citations but only to facts.

So far, I am to say the least, a little disappointed,
because that would mean a lot of my information would be missing. Ouch! I guess
I keep using FTM. Hopefully, I am doing
something wrong, or perhaps there is never a program that will 100 percent
transfer all the data from one genealogy program to another. Back to the drawing board.

Friday, December 11, 2015

Since Ancestry is now embracing Stage 4 of the Revolution of
Genealogy (see my blog post from Dec 10, 2015), and the treesync option will be
phased out by January 1, 2017, many of us will have to go back to uploading our
GEDCOMs since many may still want to use their Genealogy Software packages as their “main”
computer program.

What do I mean by “main” computer program or “main” web base program?
This is the program that you do all your inputting, changes or
deletions first. If it is a computer program, this is where you export your
GEDCOM from to be shared on other sites or with other people. Or if you only
have a web based tree(s), this website is where you export your GEDCOM from to backed
up onto your computer or shared to other sites and people.

When beginners start, I usually recommend that they start
with a web based genealogy program for recording their family histories.
Basically, I want them to get a feel for doing genealogy without having to
invest money for something they might not continue with. However, as they get
more and more people into their trees, I recommend that they purchase a
Genealogy Software package because they are much more robust. Packages
installed on our computers currently can do so much more than the web based
packages. This is based on today’s experience.

Therefore when you decide to select a web based genealogy
program for your tree, make sure you can download it to your computer. Whether
or not your plan to move to a genealogy software package or not, you will want
a copy (backup) of this tree on your computer. What if that web based company
shuts down? Do you want to start over? Of course not, so being able to download
your tree and data (regularly) is important. Second, is this tree just yours?
What I mean by this, is this tree maintained only by you or is it a shared tree?
Shared trees are nice, but do you want someone to delete your ancestor? Therefore,
your “main” tree should be a tree that is maintained only by you, that changes,
additions and deletions are only done by you. This doesn’t mean you cannot also
work on shared trees, by all means do. The data you will be inputting into a
shared tree should come from your “main” tree.

I just covered some guidelines or my suggestions for those
people who only want to do their genealogy with a web base program. To recap: 1) be able to download a GEDCOM of your tree 2) that the tree
is not a shared tree, but a tree maintained only by you. Next, I suggest that
you save your GEDCOM not only on your computer but you could save it in a “cloud”
based program such as Dropbox. This is especially important if you don’t even
own a computer. You might want to also upload it to multiple web based sites
after saving it. This way you have backups in multiple places or sites.

Now let us talk about uploading your GEDCOM to the internet.
Whether you want to make your tree public or private is up to you. On Ancestry,
they have three privacy setting options, public – allows other users (paid
subscribers) to view all content in your tree except information about living
individuals and private notes. Private has two settings – one setting limits
information about the deceased individuals in your tree but will still appear in
search results OR the other setting prevents your tree from being found in
searches and it completely keeps it private and hidden from everyone.

No matter what setting you choose, you can give individual
access to your tree through Sharing. You would assign a role to each person you
are giving access. A Guest Role can view your tree and leave comments, a
contributor can view, leave comments and add stories and photos and finally an
Editor can also add and edit people plus see information of living people. You can allow a guest or contributor to see
living people by clicking the box next to their roll. Any person can be removed
or re-invited at any time.

Guidelines for uploading a GEDCOM to share online from a
computer genealogy program.

If you already have a GEDCOM on the site for this same tree,
such as a previous version of the tree, remove that tree first. Why? Because it
is becomes very confusing for the people who match your tree. If I match
someone from your tree, I want to see your most current information, not the
three previous versions of your tree. Now I know that deleting stuff can be scary.
But let’s review for a minute. You have created a GEDCOM from your “main”
computer program. When I create a GEDCOM I put the date that I create the
GEDCOM into the file name. For example if my file is called “My Ancestry”, when
I create my GEDCOM I will save it as My Ancestry 10 Dec 2015.ged. Now I can
clearly see that this GEDCOM was created on Dec 10, 2015. Plus because I gave
it an unique name, it won’t write over previous GEDCOM’s I created on my computer. If I save
these files into a folder on my computer labeled “GEDCOM”, I should see all the
previous versions of the file as different GEDCOMs on my computer. I don’t need
duplicate copies on the internet too! Note: deleting your tree on Ancestry.com
will also delete anyone you allowed to share your tree. So you may want to note
who they were and what permissions you gave them. You might want to share the
new version of the tree with them after you are done uploading it.

Okay, so now you deleted your tree from the online website.
You will need to create or import your GEDCOM to create a new tree. Based on
using Ancestry.com, this option will give your tree the same name as the
GEDCOM. You might want to do this, because in the file name, you clearly can
see when it was last updated. However
you can give this tree any name you wish. In Ancestry, there is even a tree
Description so if you don’t have the date in the tree name, you may want to put
the date the file was created in the description so that you can clearly
remember the last time you created or uploaded this tree.

Finally and most importantly, if you have a computer based
genealogy program that you use as your "main" tree, don’t make changes to your tree using the Ancestry online
program. Because those changes will not show up on your computer based
genealogy program unless you manually make the changes there too.

Remember, your “main” computer program or “main” tree is the
only place you want to do all your additions, changes or deletions. So even if
you do your genealogy only on the web, do it only in the same web program. If
Ancestry is main web based tree, and you also upload your tree to MyHeritage,
don’t do any changes to your tree using the MyHeritage website.

Now this doesn't mean you can have multiple trees. For example: I have a my ancestry, my husband's ancestry and my half-siblings ancestry. Some people might have one tree for all these people, I have three trees. Anyway, when I imply "main" it could apply to any of these three trees.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

First I want to thank Pat Richley-Erickson and Russ
Worthington from Wacky Wednesday with Dear Myrtle for settling me down. I wasn’t
on the edge but I was upset and throwing a temper tantrum. Yesterday’s blog
that I did along with Wacky Wednesday helped me get this out of my system.

I
realized what I really was upset about was the fact I felt as if I am taking a
step backwards. Since I am one of many who have Family Tree Maker (FTM) as my
main genealogy program and used treesync to keep my Ancestry tree(s) current,
having to go “back” to uploading a GEDCOM (starting January 1, 2017) is a step
back for me. I feel that in this day and age, we should be moving forward. I
just have to accept the things I can’t change!

So I started thinking about the Evolution of Genealogy. To
me, genealogy has moved through stages. Even though we might start a new stage in
genealogy, we never completely move away from previous stages. Let me explain
how I see the stages of Genealogy.

Stage 1 was oral histories. In the beginning, people past
down their family histories by telling the next generation about previous
generations. This has been going on forever.

Stage 2 is the written histories. As people developed the alphabetic
to go with our spoken language, some found that recording these histories was
much more appealing than having to remember all the stories. Writing these
recorded histories came in many forms, whether carved in stone, metal or wood.
Then as paper was developed, these histories were written down on paper. Later,
people did use typewriters and even computers to record their family histories,
but basically stage 2 is using forms or charts for recording their information.

Once stage 2 started, stage 1 didn’t stop. These two stages
have been occurring together for many years and in fact are still being used
today.

Stage 3 is the computer genealogy software program. As
personal computers started to be developed, people found recording these
histories was much more appealing and easier than using pen/pencil and paper. As genealogy software programs were developed
some people found that organizing their family histories were easier than
filling in forms or charts. That they could just click on a person and find all
the relationships, facts, sources and such that were tied to that person. Not
everyone embraced this stage. In fact
there are people who are still doing their genealogy as stage 2 and that is
okay. Even though GEDCOM technology was introduced and people could upload
those files to the Internet, at this stage, those files are static (not
changing). People could view their histories, but changes occurred at the
genealogy software program level only.

Stage 4 is the cloud or web based genealogy. As the internet
started to be developed, people found there was no need to purchase or install genealogy
software on their computers. Some didn’t even need to own a computer since web
based genealogy can be done on tablets and smartphones. They found they not
only could access their histories from anywhere or from any device they own but
they could make changes on the fly. This is the stage that Ancestry has decided
to embrace.

As you can see from these stages, they can occur at the same
time. What stage each family historian or genealogist embraces is up to
them.

In a future blog I am going to cover what I consider are
guidelines people need to follow when uploading their Gedcom’s to sites such as
Ancestry.com. Too many times, people upload the latest and greatest without
removing previous versions of that same tree. Plus I will cover some guidelines
that these Stage 4 genealogists might want to consider.

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Yesterday, like many of you have received the shocking news
that Ancestry is retiring the Family Tree Maker Software program. For the few
who haven’t seen the news here is the link to the blog page; http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/.

Most of the posts on that blog page are just as upset as me;
however a few people don’t understand why we are so upset. So I am going to try
to explain what I am feeling. Image your spouse saying out of the blue “I want
a divorce”. It’s like what? Am I hearing this correct? I didn’t think there was
any problem, why are you leaving me. Okay, you are correct a spouse saying out
of the blue they want a divorce is worst, but you understand how it takes you
by surprise.

So let me backtrack and tell you a little about my genealogy
history. In junior high (middle school) I was introduced to a genealogy
assignment and it was very interesting and sparked my curiosity. I graduated in
1981 and then personal computers started hitting the market. By 1986, I knew
nothing about computers and decided to go back to school and get my computer
degree, in spite of having two small children at home. I purchased my first computer in 1987. When
taking a BASIC programming computer class, I started thinking how computers
would make doing my genealogy so much easier. I hated my handwriting and having
to record the piece of information on so many forms seemed redundant to me. Mind you, I totally understand why I had to
record that information so many times, but each time I record something was
another chance for me to record it incorrectly. So my search started for the
ideal genealogy software package.

Windows hadn’t quite come on the scene yet and the first
program I used was not very user friendly. I didn’t know anything about GEDCOM’s
and not even sure if it was around quite yet. Anyway, when I decided that first
program was not going to hack it, I found out I could not export the
information into a new program. I had to start over with my 300 plus names.

I had seen Family Tree Maker was starting to make an appearance.
It was a very costly program, and I wanted to be absolutely sure this was
something I really wanted. I remembering biting the bullet and purchasing the
software package and I can’t even remember what version but I remember using
version 3 at some point.

About this time, the internet was starting to come on the
scene. I still wasn’t sure if FTM was what I really wanted and some other programs
allowed you to download evaluation versions of the software however I kept with
FTM. As my skills increased, so did FTM capabilities. I don’t remember if FTM
allowed you to record your sources in those early versions but I started
realizing I needed to record my sources around 1997. However, copying the same
source was not an easy task. I end up using notepad to save the detail I wanted
in my source and then copying and pasting the parts of the citation into where
I thought they should go. Then came my dream function, being able to copy the
same source over and over again. I was in heaven.

About this time I had exhausted all my free options for
getting leads from the internet and decided to join Ancestry.com. I saw I could
import my tree to Ancestry and it would be there as “cousin bait”. However, I
found that I wasn’t on top of keeping my tree current on Ancestry and then came
another dream function, treesync. It was like FTM read my mind and knew exactly
what I wanted. I didn’t want to update my tree on Ancestry’s side but on FTM’s
side and with a press of a button, my tree changes went to Ancestry. Now my “cousin
bait” was up to date. Before, I updated my tree once or twice a year (if I
remembered). Now FTM told me when I needed to update. The programmer side of me
loved the treesync logs that showed me all the changes I made to my tree. Now
when a cousin asked if I made any new finds, I could quickly review my logs and
answer the question.

But the real strength lies deep inside of the FTM software.
I can do so much more with FTM than what was being offered by Ancestry Trees.
If I want to run a report that shows me all the people buried in one town, I
can run that report. If I want to create a custom field called FindAGrave and
record the memorial number in that field I can do that too. If I want to run a
report for all the people buried in that town that doesn’t have a FindAGrave
memorial, I can do that too. From that report I can create a to-do-list that states
to visit those cemeteries and take pictures and create FindAGrave memorials. Or
as I am recording my citations, if I find I am missing a source, I can create a
to-do-list item to get that source. I do this often for vital records, I create
a to-do-list item for that person and write a little note such as “Obtain death
certificate” and then tag the to-do-list item and place it into a category
titled “whatever the county is”. I also create a to-do-list item with the
county courthouse information, location, phone number, hours of operation,
address and place it into the same county category. Now I run a to-do-list for
that category and quickly have a list of vital records I need to look up at
that county courthouse. When I get enough on that list, I make a road trip.
Why? Because everything is not on-line.

So does Ancestry Tree offer all these options? To be honest
I don’t know because I find moving around my tree on Ancestry is slow and
cumbersome. Moving around my tree on FTM is quick and easy.

If Ancestry is retiring FTM, how long before they change
other things? When I first started on Ancestry, one could and still can create
a tree for free. Will they still allow this in the future? In the past, with a
free “guest” account you could look at other public trees, but not anymore. You
must have a paid subscription to see public trees. Do you know that Ancestry
never announced that changed. I thought if I made my tree public, then anyone
could see it. NOPE, only those paid subscribers can see my tree. So much for “cousin
bait”. I know a lot of people who aren’t as dedicated to genealogy or research
as I am who only have a tree on Ancestry as a free “guest” account. They don’t
understand my shock at the news of FTM being retired. But then again, they don’t
totally understand how to do exhaustive genealogy research. They think if they
don’t find it on-line then the record doesn’t exist.

I do know that even though Ancestry is retiring FTM and
after 2017 our tree sync function will no longer work, but perhaps I will
retire all my Trees on Ancestry by that time too. Why should Ancestry benefit
financially from my tree by advertising how many trees are on their site that is
part of their paid subscription? Yes, I know I might be punishing myself, but
if my tree is going to be out of date, because now I have to go back and import
my tree regularly, why bother.

I also know that since FTM is on my computer, I can keep
using it. However, I am going to start exploring other options because I don’t
want all my eggs in one basket.

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About Me

I became interested in genealogy as a teenager but waited until I was 20 before I started my research efforts. I have four children and one grandchild. I am researching my family, my husband's family and my half-siblings family.

Besides Genealogy, I enjoy reading, traveling, family, history and games.